Steam is offering Far
Cry 2 for half-price for 24 hours, as Ubisoft's open-world sequel to
Crytek's first-person shooter is today's installment in their week-long Ubisoft
promotion. There's more Ubisoft digital distribution news on
GOG.com, where they have begun
adding Ubi's back catalog to this DRM-free marketplace. The first titles they
offer are
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,
Beyond Good and
Evil, and IL-2
Sturmovik: 1946, and they say more will be added soon.

Because the pre-order game was a freebie and not a purchase. I don't agree with the policy, but I can see the distinction.

So as usual you are focusing on Valve as being the cause of the problem here, when most likely it's a Publisher decision

I am focusing on who controls Steam at the highest level, and that is Valve. Only a Valve fanboy would want to deflect that responsibility away from where it ultimately belongs. The evidence suggests it is not just a publisher decision because Valve doesn't allow bundles to be split up on its own games either with the exception of HL2 and EP1 in the Orange box. None of its other bundles can have parts gifted from what I've read.

Plus, whether or not Valve is the source of this problem isn't really the issue because Valve could rectify it in any case. Valve could certainly change the gifting policy for its own games, and even for third-parties Valve has had no trouble dictating terms on similar issues such as mandating achievements and setting prices with at least some indie developers' games. Valve has built up Steam's share of the PC game distribution market to the point where Valve wields a lot of leverage over third-party developers and publishers who want to put their wares on Steam. If Valve wanted to make Steam's gifting less restrictive, it could certainly do so even for third-party games.

But we already established that in some cases with third-party games, there are exceptions. GTAIV/Vice City pre-order. Why allow it on pre-orders but not bundles? So as usual you are focusing on Valve as being the cause of the problem here, when most likely it's a Publisher decision.

This seems ass backwards when you can get extra copies from pre-order bonuses (third party companies), the Orange Box as well as the L4D 4-pack.

It's a deliberate policy though. The Orange Box and the L4D 4-pack were the only exceptions mentioned in the gifting terms that I could find, and even with the Orange Box only HL2 and EP1 are allowed for gifting. The other games in the bundle are not.

I agree that the gifting restrictions are bad for customers, but from its written policies it is clear that Valve treats games on Steam as subscriptions and not products and doesn't allow customers to share, sell, or transfer their subscribed games so that it doesn't have to compete against them for sales.

I know this because I had purchased the GTA bundle on Steam when it was on sale. Then Vice City was included as GTAIV pre-order bonus.

Yes, but in your case the copy of Vice City wasn't a purchased bundle, but rather a single game added to your Steam account as a bonus. So, you didn't gift the copy of Vice City from the bundle, but rather the individual copy you received later. You may still be right that an individual part of a game bundle can be gifted if the Steam account already has an existing copy of the game, but your particular example is far from definitive on the issue.

My understanding is that you can't gift an existing game in your Steam account to someone else nor can you gift part of a new bundle purchase on Steam. And, if you meant that you would give away your copy of the retail version of DMMM, the person who receives it won't be able to use the multiplayer portion of the game if you have already registered the game's key with Steam.

Yeah, but isn't the first Far Cry available for free download? I vaguely remember that...the rest are a good deal, especially IL-2-1946. Too bad they couldn't throw in Lock-on with that. Then it would really rock...

Far Cry, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, IL-2 1946, and Beyond Good and Evil for 9.99 on steam this weekend.

0.0

Wow. Nice.

I just canceled my gamefly account today because there isn't much to play on the console lately that is worth renting...and I'm also seeing more money flow toward PC games lately and it's almost all because of these sales.

Old games for bargain bin prices are an attractive product on the PC. I'm sure some developers don't like it but this is putting my in front of my computer WAY more effectively than their shiny new games are.

Bring on the old games!

On the flip side these kinds of sales have got to be hammering the sales of new products. How many people are going to buy a new game at $29.99 or more when you can buy 4 for $10!? And how many hours are those old games going to keep you busy?

Far Cry, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, IL-2 1946, and Beyond Good and Evil for 9.99 on steam this weekend.

Dark Messiah was cheesy fun with good hand to hand combat for a FPS, had Thief designer consult on gameplay, so there's some similar stuff in there. Fun Game IMHO, after it got patched and fixed all the bugginess

Unlike those others GOG isn't an online service. The games have obsolutely no DRM, so once you download a purchased game from GOG, you never have to go back unless you want to buy another game or didn't backup your download.

Not purchasing from GOG because you don't want to create an account is like not purchasing from Amazon or any other online retailer which requires one.